I definitely agree about the visuals being this story's greatest achievement, but I have to also mention the Long Song scene. The music is great, the Doctor's speech is fantastic, and Clara defeating Akhaten with all the possibilities of what could have been was a brilliant end to the climax.

Love this one. Very sweet. The Long Song and the visuals were great, and Matt Smith, as ever, is absolutely fantastic.

The fact that 11 tries to defeat the monster using his big epic speech and fails and then Clara saves the day instead using a Doctor Speech^tm is a wonderful foreshadowing of things to come.

I really like this one, very underrated in my opinion. I admire the Classic Who feel to this one; one of very few New Who stories by this point that didn’t feature a human being (bar the obvious). Did a really good job of presenting an alien world using both visuals and writing. The sentimental value as currency maybe could have been presented a bit better, but the idea still holds strong I think.

@Dr Theta Sigma It's very classic Who, yes. Something that I've become aware of more recently is how this mini-season reflects the classic series. Strap in:

The opener is just the opener. But after that, we have this one, which is all about discovery, mentions Susan and has a character called "Grandfather" (Hartnell); Cold War has a base under siege from an Ice Warrior (couldn't be more Troughton if it tried); Hide's haunted house where the ghost turns out to be time traveller from the future is a straight steal from Day of the Daleks (Pertwee); we see more of the Tardis in the next one, and the Eye of Harmony (Tom Baker); The Crimson Horror... I haven't worked this one yet, but I suppose Gillyflower's daughter falling in love with the handsome young Doctor reflects what many outraged people thought about Davison's casting; Nightmare in Silver is awful (Colin Baker)—joking, but it is in a carnival where everything's gone horribly wrong, so write your own jokes I suppose; and then the finale is much darker in tone, and threatens to tell us more of the Doctor's backstory, but mercifully doesn't (McCoy). To top it all, we then get five minutes of Paul McGann—only this time literally only five minutes.

The music

The Long Song especially

Merry Gejelh

@Missy Clara Oswald Gesundheit

Np

That but with Clara whistling- throwback to childhood whenever you have to hide something